Battle.net

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/5011935/Heart_of_the_Swarm_Update_-_New_Video_-08_06_2012#blog

I didnt see a thread about it. I am curious to hear your imput.

I must say that as a protoss i have high respect for you guys in regards to the TvZ matchup. Target firing banelings with tanks, splitting marines, etc. That is awesome. I feel like Blizzard is making you into protoss and terran mech will be even more of an a-move baby build than protoss. We forcefield, storm, keep the zealots in front, blink, etc, and yeah... a-move. But Mech needs none of that (except maybe siege) and the Warhounds even target mech units.

I could understand Blizzard helping you out by making the Tanks prioritize banelings, which are fast and in numbers, but what's so hard in targeting slow mech units in the enemy force? The immortal doesnt have that.

Finally, those freaking robots look way too clunky and silly. Why is Blizzard turning Terrans into an ugly robotic race?

And i was really liking the concept of the big hero Thor unit, as a Terran counterpart to the Mothership. Maybe it would have been useless, but i dunno, having a big flagship just for the sheer awesomeness and swag is cool.

I hope you guys dont flame me, i really like Terrans, i just think you got the short end of the stick in regards to HotS. Only the mines seem cool.

Viper just looks insanely OP vs terran. Hydralisks too, but stimmed marines should do the trick since they have no armor.
It just seems that siege tanks are going to have a hard time.

We will see how things play out in the beta it is just alpha so a lot can change still.

I think the new additions will be interesting for the terran matchups.

In TvZ, I think mech will change little. Vipers will make mid-game attacks a lot easier to handle by sniping thors and tanks. Battlehellions on the other hand will be a better meatshield for the siegetanks and thors while the widowmines will protect the flanks a bit. Lategame will probably still be about the zerg getting a lot of broodlords but ultras with charge seem to be a decent alternative instead of just being terrible vs mech.

I have a little bit of fear for standard marine/tank play versus zerg. Ultras were alreadt very good against this composition and with charge it might make it was to easy to A-move and roll all over a maxed terran army. Especially with a few blinding clouds.

In TvP I think the changes are really nice. Mech wasn't really an option in WoL and the only option terran had was MMM vs Deathball. Now, with some nice additions to mech, it seems it can finaly take on a protoss deathball and dicisively come out on top. Protoss on the other hand have been given tools to combat mech in the form of harrasment and a long range capital ship.

The standard MMM vs deathball will still be the same so now the matchup will be a lot more diverse I think.

Tanks will be obsolete as it will be a liability late game. Warhound is a pretty boring unit , but it will probably be a massproduced staple unit. As i dont think it will have any activated special . Thereby lightening the microload for terrans.

The hellion transform well brings back the firebat. I always missed the firebat. Thought it probably wont be as powerfull as a firebat seeing it wont have stim.

The widow mine is pretty much a gimped down spider mine . It will not run up to its target and has a timer. Only bonus is that it hits air. It will be awfull against someone who uses lots of zerglings as it will effectivly turn them into banelings.

I think much of this expancion is recycled brood war stuff. I wished they gone more for the radiation theme terran had in brood war instead of the apperantly tranformer/mechwarrior theme their now going for. The shredder woulda been more fitting for the terran but widow mine will probably be more usefull.

Am I the only one that thinks that Terran got the shorthand of the stick since they didn't get any good AA units to counter the new Toss and Zerg Air spellcasters? Or maybe Vikings will get a nice damage buff that we haven't heard about.

Either way I expect that there will be some massive overhauls in the way units function in HotS.
E.g The stealth field seems a little OP as shown and I expect the tempest to be cut or at least heavily edited because as it stands it does basically fills the role of the carrier...

I think the zerg viper is OP in the shown state (too long range I guess).

On the T side, I think the mines are OP currently. Did they actually latch on to Air units?

I think it's way too early to be worried, since the game is still in active development.

@Rafen
No you are not. I think terran is pretty much ruled out. Both toss and zerg has got more of the stuff they already have; in different clothes. Since they are very difficullt for terran already, new hots units won't make it easier.

Broodlords where part of the late game; now there is swarm host which is kind-of a broodlordesque unit, but already from the early(?)/midd-game. Maybe we will see less zerglings due to swarm hosts which might be good thing considering lings speed; but nobody knows yet. It looks like swarm host bring to midd game what broodlords bring to late game.

Burrowed bailings wil now mandate every terran to have turrets early on and raven when they go out, so terran macro will get slowed down.

Finally ultras has got charge! :) yey .... biggest damage dealer got even more power yippie :). That probably to make sure scv:s can't repair pf:s in time.

On toss side you got that spitting ship with 25 range :). They must be kidding. Considering how cheap is observer, or how fast is oracle, together with one or two tempests it will be much easier for toss to harass. Later on they can transfer into mass tempests for the late game. I think tempests look like toss version of broodlords. We are probably going to see late game toss going mass tempests or at least having quite few and snipe half of the terran army before engagement even starts.

recall ability is nice. They can do their ealry push and have units out, and in case terran does serious attack, like 2-3 medivac dropps on base, they can just recall army back in a moment. Terran already has slowest units and take forever to get army back home if harass happends to be too strong.

I thikn also we will see more of 4gatesque pushes earlier in the game and bigger harasses where toss goes in for some fast damage and than just recals home. Sure toss has already have bling; but it actually requires micro, and works only on small distances. Recall gives opportunity to be more aggressive and care less about your deathball since u have a backup plan. You can keep more of your army up-front instead of in your base so to say.

I dunno if warhound and widow mines are even close enough to remedy for tempests and recall and swarmhost. We have to see games done by somebody else than blizzards marketing/programming team. That game casted by day9 on the blog was ridicolous and clearly just a marketing video. It looks bad to me, and I realized from early on that toss will winn at the end. It was point to show us zerg units are op, but u can still win if you harass enough and manage to hang-on. From terran example, we have seen how it goes against toss and zerg :).

Hopefully units and balance will change and we will see some better work from blizzard, Otherwise I am affraid that hots games will become linear and will loose appeal even to audience and thus to pro-gaming scene. Due to "balance" fixes games have already become very predictable and becoming boring: risk it is going to in that direction.

I dunno; i just judge by those videos, I guess we have to play the game to know how it really is.

I think Vipers shouldn't be able to pull sieged siege tanks. It looks ridiculous. Also, I think Terran is the most straight forward race, and is therefore getting the most straight forward units.

Marines are soldiers, marauders are rocket soldiers, medics, tanks are splash damage and so on. Everything about Terran is doing damage with minor alterations like stealth, siege, stimpacks and such. Protoss use abilities to alter positioning and seem like a crowd control race. Zerg seem like the race that needs to control the battlefield and use adaptive units.

Whauh! You have 3 races where one is already weaker than 2 others, and you choose to improve those 2 others :).

By giving pretty much no new strats to terran, you are making terrans less interesting to play for people. Don't u realize that people will switch to one of two other races and game vill become less flavored, more predictable and thus less interesting.

There hasn't even been any Battle Report for Terran, Nooby. How can you say there will be no new strategies? Battle hellions will be excellent against charelots and speedlings.

12/06/2012 17:18Posted by MationMac

There hasn't even been any Battle Report for Terran, Nooby. How can you say there will be no new strategies? Battle hellions will be excellent against charelots and speedlings.

As I said above I dunno yet for sure. We will have to play the game and see how it goes. I have looked at those new units that were shown in those two videos on the blog, and try to figure out what they mean for a terran player.

My conclusion is that both zerg and toss have gott more of same goodies they already have; only in new clothes and even earlier in case of zerg (swarms). Toss gott new strategy with tempests if they really came out with 25 range and enough hp to 1 shot tank or any other unit.

Sure battle helions might be game changers; just like blue-flame helions are game changers now? Blue flame helions are also good against zealots and zerglings. Still I don't see what new strat does it bring to the table? Terran might have obligatory battle hellion(s) instead of, or as ocmplement to marrauder in there 6 minute, resp. 11:30 minute push. But there will still be those push(es) and terran will wish to end the game before 15 minute mark from one base. So strategy does not change at all.

All I care is their looks! New Units are just terrible.

Please don`t let it go live like this.

The viper seemingly being able to pull sieged tanks and large units is just ridiculous.

12/06/2012 17:18Posted by MationMac

There hasn't even been any Battle Report for Terran

There is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv-i8s0ipII

Whauh! You have 3 races where one is already weaker than 2 others, and you choose to improve those 2 others :).

By giving pretty much no new strats to terran, you are making terrans less interesting to play for people. Don't u realize that people will switch to one of two other races and game vill become less flavored, more predictable and thus less interesting.

Of course there are going to be new strategies :) Even the smallest balance adjustments create new strategies and options, and here we are adding units and making significant changes. Also, in the last balance update we shared we stated that we don't see any race as the weakest currently, but there was one, it'd be a matter of balance, not design.

What we are tackling with HotS at the moment is making gameplay fun and versatile in that sense. The balance process will be ongoing and we will not release the expansion until we are happy with how things are, be sure of that! I guess we will get a much better idea on the balance of things when the beta starts and the community at large gets a chance to play :)

What about the ghost and raven? Are there any plans to buff snipe (but not how it originally was where it did 45 dmg to bio) and also the raven better? Especially the seeker missile, which to me, will have lots of ooooohs and ahhhhhhhhs in the pro scene, but since the missile sucks right now, like energy cost, its rarely used.

Saw it already, but that was such a frightening show match (if you are terran).

Of course it was very much scripted to showcase all the new units, but:
- while killing quite a few units, the brand new reaper with auto heal upgrade effectively put the terran way behind in econ because it is a license to drone for zerg,
- the warhound as anti-mech is of course extremely useful in TvZ,
- battle hellions are nice but slow,
- widow mines are extremely gimmicky: like nukes, very cool if your opponent is kind enough to walk into them with lots of units, but unlikely to do much in high-level games,

however:
- vipers look&play cool,
- charging ultras will rip terran apart in the late game,
- not clear if swarm host is really effective,
- but hydras with speed upgrade will become the best effing unit in the game.

Still: nice vid.

I think the Viper is going to be extremely good and had to deal with. why is zerg getting a anti death ball unit when its zerg that has the best death ball by far. (dunno if thats the case in hots tho). I am also very scared for the stephano style in pvz. 11-13min max with roaches and vipers seems very strong, especially when you can pull out every immortal. So I feel that the viper can pull out every unit in the protoss that really deals the high firepower. Im scared that the viper is going to scare robotic play v zerg. since they can snipe every expensive key unit that toss has.
a protoss army that only has gateway units is pretty useless mid game.
they can also pull tempest and voids. but of course, nothing is decided yet and everything can change. Im sure hots is going to be awesome. ty blizz <3

(sorry if the english isn't that good)